Product Description
This is the first comparative study in English of two German-Jewish women poets who survived the Nazi genocide but did not escape its effects. The study begins with a reading of Sachs's and Ausländer's poetry in the context of the wider scope of 'Holocaust literature.' Focusing on the poet as witness bearing the double burden of survival and remembrance, the work argues that 'work of memory'achieved by Ausländer and Sachs exemplifies the complexity of poetic reflection on trauma and history.In addition to aesthetic considerations, the book concentrates on the implications of Sachs's and Ausländer's poetic engagement for an 'ethics of remembrance'. The poetic dialogue with memory exemplified in these poets' works offers a model for 'working through' the trauma of the past with significance not only for Holocaust studies, but also for investigations of memory and trauma. As conscientious yet troubled efforts at representing the diversity of individual and collective suffering embracing both 'Jewish' experience and the human condition, Sachs's and Ausländer's poems can be read as at once subjective and universal injunctions to an awareness of the connections, divisions, and tensions that memory brings to bear on social relations.Kathrin Bower is assistant professor of German at the University of Richmond (Virginia). ... Read more

Product Description
Here are the letters between Nelly Sachs (1891 - 1970), recipient of the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, and the great German-speaking poet Paul Celan (1920 - 1970). Their correspondence lasted from 1954 until Celan's death by suicide. Sachs died the day Celan was buried. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Connection
If you're familiar with these two poets, you can already appreciate the intensity, sincerity, and uniqueness of their vision and the horror the Shoah forced upon each of them.With that background, the sweetness displayed in this correspondence, especially of Sachs to Celan, is doubly remarkable.Little or no melodrama can be found here, despite the difficulty of life's events in the years covered and the poignancy of the subjects of some of these letters.The well-considered footnotes relay highlights of each writer's biography and explicate their difficult circumstances.

The entire collection spans only a few dozen pages, but is a valuable insight into the lives of these two most consquential German writers.For those unfamiliar with their poetry this correspondence may still be impressive, but if you've read and appreciate either of these writers, this book is worth owning.

My review
The book takes the reader through the amazing friendship of these two writers. I found the book to be a wonderful aid while writingmy term paper on the works of Nelly Sachs. The book provides a great insight intothe lives of these two authors.

Correspondence for love with despair
A bunch of letters written over 16 years by two nobel-winner poets. It'sheartbreaking. Nelly Sachs, "his Li", loved him, no doubt. Her"dearest Paul" was married with a child. It is fascinating toread how two poets process the most common story among people. Withtenderness and sadness and so much dignity. And as Nelly Sachs says:"Love is inhuman". This book reveals the sensitivity it takes towrite poetry and how this sensitivity marks your every single gesture,making sometimes life to be simply unbearable. "If only I had youhere" Nelly Sachs says, and that is what the reader wishes with her.An unfulfilled wish. They met only once and never again. Hard for simplepeople, even harder for poets. "You are my light" they say toeach other and from the third letter she feels he is her home. Did theydecrease each others loneliness, or did they make it bigger? It's up to thereader to decide. ... Read more